Source: TW
Hello friends I have written a thread on how the military innovations of Greek mercenary adventurers changed the Greek world, bringing about the transition from Classical to Hellenistic eras and the death of ancient democracy.
Late classical warfare was characterised by phalanx push, citizen soldiers and small-scale warfare. Crucially, war was fought by conscript citizen-soldiers rather than professionals. Mercenary activity was limited, though there was demand for hoplite infantry outside of Greece. The Peloponnesian War changed everything. The devastation it wrought was total. Rudimentary siege technology meant Greeks largely didnt participate in sieges but rather pillaged the countryside - agriculture and land value plummeted. Many farmers joined mercenary bands, leading to the rise of prominent mercenary captains and an increasing presence of mercenaries on the battlefield.
A handful of captains began to tinker and experiment with hoplite doctrine, particularly the role of ‘peltasts’. In the 5th c, peltasts, like other lightly armed troops, were regarded as inferior and barbarous and so played an almost trivial role in combat. They harassed the enemy on the march and opened combat with a hurl of javelins. However, in 391 BC, Athenian condotierre captain Iphicrates used peltasts to ambush a Spartan column, killing half of the Spartans and routing the army. This was the first time a peltast force defeated a hoplite phalanx on its own.
Later, in 378, the mercenary band of captain Chabrias were arrayed alongside the Theban army atop a ridge, looking down at army of the Spartan king Agesilaus II. The Spartans charged up the hill, determined to break the Athenians. At a word, Chabrias ordered his peltasts to get down on one knee and lean on their shields with their spears pointing forward to recieve the charge. Stunned by this display of discipline from peltasts, the supposedly invincible Spartan hoplites abandoned their attack. This was a crucial moment - a sea change in Ancient Greek military history. Flexibility and professionalism seemed to be triumphing over brute force, and against the Spartans no less. The days of the heavy hoplite phalanx were numbered - warfare had changed.
Iphicrates modified the equipment and fighting style of his mercenary band. He lengthened their spears to increase killing power while reducing the size of their shields to make them more maneuverable. His men wore linen cuirasses instead of bronze and wore special light boots. Iphicrates new model of soldier was more like a hoplite than a peltast but the emphasis remained on speed, maneuverability and the ‘pelte’ shield, as opposed to the heavy hoplite ‘aspis’ (or hoplon). The other crucial element that Iphicrates introduced was a new professionalism and espirit de corps. Iphicrates, as a mercenary, had control over his men in a way that a city-state general did not. While the money flowed, Iphicrates could demand as much as he wanted from them.
Generals of city-state armies were elected, served a fixed term and were subject to all kinds of checks and balances on their power. Iphicrates’ control of his men, and the fact that they were professionals, allowed him to experiment with and perfect the art of soldiering. Citizen-soldiers had to go home for the harvest while professional mercenaries didn’t. When fighting defensively, citizens might desert to protect their farmsteads. Mercenaries didn’t. Citizens could fight as hoplites but mercenaries could specialise in specific ways of fighting
Iphicrates reforms - the long spear, the small shield, the light armour - were picked up on by Philip II of Macedon who created the world-beating pike phalanx. Philip utilised a modern combined-arms approach to protect the army’s flanks and give it flexibility on the battlefield. I.e. the key to Macedonian battlefield success was exactly the same as the key to Iphicrates’ success: discipline and maneuverability. Philip II invited distinguished Greek mercenary commanders to join his court and advise him - he melded existing Macedonian aristocracy with this new elite of military professionals to create his hetairoi - his Companions. Athenian visitors Theopompus and Demosthenes witnessed these reforms take place under Macedon’s supposedly archaic monarchical political system and concluded that it was barbarous and that Macedon was a savage state run by brigands and brutes. Alexander the Great then took his revolutionary Macedonian military machine - staffed and led by professionals, not citizens - and subdued all of Greece and then the known world. The quibbling, sclerotic Athenians who feared reforms that might empower great men, were silenced.
But why did Classical democracy and the city-state not return after the collapse of Alexander’s empire? Why were kingdoms established when even in the 4th century BC many Greeks considered monarchy to be a primitive and outdated form of governance? The nature of military operations changed to necessitate a permanent commander with total control over his army, and democracy and oligarchy simply were not suited to this reality. Autocracy was necessary to exert sufficient control over the army. Over the classical period, numerous tyrants rose and attempted to establish autocracies in Greek cities but those who seized power by military means usually did not have the legitimacy to avoid being toppled shortly afterward. In the end, it was backwards Macedonian monarchy, clinging on for centuries in the corner of the Greek world, that prevailed. A combination of autocracy and legitimacy. The Hellenistic Era was born.
Interesting to note as well that these world-changing military innovations came from the private sector - that bureaucracy and red tape paralyzed military men in the Greek state so they did not have room to innovate.